Shyness is a personal reaction to an experienced or anticipated social interaction. The consequences of shyness are often negative and undesirable, involving inadequate self-presentation, loss of available opportunities, and, in the extreme, withdrawal and isolation from contact with others. Although shyness has been studied as a personality trait, it is better understood not in dispositional terms, but rather as the product of cultural and social programming. This results in excessive reliance on self-monitoring and over-concern for social evaluation, as well as misattribution of the locus of causality of stress reactions. Our preliminary survey research on nearly 1000 respondents indicates (among other things) that shyness is: (a) more prevalent than usually suspected (42 percent of a U. S. sample describe themselves as "currently shy persons"); (b) often considered to be a serious personal and social problem; and (c) determined largely by the readiness of individuals to apply a chronic trait label to what are actually temporary affective and cognitive states, or are even situation-specific behavioral reactions. This biased generalization makes shyness difficult to extinguish. The current program of research will collect survey data on the causes, correlates, and consequences of shyness in a broad sample of respondents (varying in age, sex, education, type of occupation, race, and ethnic group). Cross-cultural comparisons of a mainland U. S. sample will be made with those from Hawaii, Japan, Taiwan, Republic of China, Mexico, Israel, England, and Germany. Selected subjects will be interviewed under controlled conditions and their verbal and nonverbal behavior analyzed. Laboratory studies will relate shyness to classes of deindividuation and individuation variables, information-processing variables, and those suggested by attributional analyses. Intervention strategies will be developed to reduce or prevent the negative outcomes of shyness.